Hello Beautiful

She wished William was still working on his manuscript, because she thought writing might help stitch him to his life. He’d stopped writing about six months into their relationship, though. “I don’t need it anymore,” he’d told her, and Sylvie had understood. William was working for the Northwestern team by then, and he’d replaced the silence inside him with love and friendship, his medication, and the daily thunder of basketballs hitting the court floor. William’s writing had never been a book, after all. It had been a struggle inside himself. Each sentence he wrote about the sport he loved was a match lit against his internal darkness. In his life with Sylvie, he’d no longer required this practice.

A co-worker called her name, and Sylvie turned. Her husband was walking across the library carpet toward her. William smiled at his wife, but it was a manufactured smile, the kind he’d worn when she first met him, many years earlier. He’d gone back to needing levers and pulleys to make his face do what he wanted it to do. She could feel him thinking: Make Sylvie think you’re okay so she won’t worry.

She knew she couldn’t afford to worry now. He’d come to pick her up so they could tell Emeline and Cecelia about her diagnosis. Sylvie had told William that he didn’t need to come, but he’d insisted. Her husband’s face had been set ever since she’d told him she was sick two weeks earlier. Something inside William had turned in a new direction, and he was intent on making sure his words and actions lined up with his new route. Sylvie knew that route had to do with her, but she didn’t know what it entailed. She was newly aware of a drain — like in a bathtub — deep inside her, through which her energy was escaping. She could no longer try to understand everything. She had to let this go. She wondered if dying was simply going to be an exercise in letting go of one thing after another.

She and William held hands while they walked the few blocks to the super-duplex. It was the middle of October, and the leaves were changing colors. What a tree, Sylvie thought, when they passed an old oak. She nodded at a cardinal sitting on the roof of a car. It was a cloudy day, but there was a triangle of blue in the left corner of the sky. William and Sylvie didn’t speak; they didn’t need to.

Cecelia and Emeline both met them at the door to Emeline’s house, their faces creased with concern. Sylvie had asked them to be home, said she had something to discuss. The four of them stood in the kitchen — Josie was at work, and Izzy wasn’t there — while Sylvie said what she had to say. It reminded her of the last time she’d gathered her younger sisters to tell them something they didn’t want to hear; the one-two punch of that day had been that they’d all had to let go of Julia, like releasing a balloon. Sylvie was still grateful to Emeline and Cecelia for forgiving her, and she felt terrible that she was about to break their hearts again. It was a relief that Izzy happened not to be there; the young woman had her own studio apartment now, but she still floated from one bedroom to another, the way she had her whole life. It would have felt like too much to have to speak to Izzy too. Sylvie needed to do this slowly, at a pace she could stand. She knew she would have to tell Rose as well, but she couldn’t bear her mother’s reaction yet. In a few months, when Sylvie was feeling sicker, she would call her mother or ask one of her sisters to.

When Sylvie managed to say the words, the twins responded differently than she would have expected. Cecelia cried, while Emeline got mad.

“Absolutely not,” she said, her voice raised. “No way. That’s not right!”

William looked at Emeline. “Nothing about this situation is right,” he said.

Cecelia said, “You double-checked everything with Kent?”

Sylvie nodded. It was remarkable how deeply they all trusted Kent. He was a sports doctor — not even a general practitioner, and certainly not an oncologist — but they all called him when they had a bad fever or texted him a picture of a cut on the back of a hand to get his opinion on whether stitches were required. Doctor was an unshakable identity, and Sylvie and her family, and all of Kent’s many friends, showed him their wounds and symptoms with a look that said, Can you fix me?

Emeline paced around the kitchen. Cecelia wiped tears off her cheeks, and more came.

“It was supposed to be me,” Emeline said, in a hard voice.

Sylvie and Cecelia stared at her. “Why?” Cecelia said.

“I’m supposed to be Beth, out of all of us. Not you. I always knew I would die first.” Her voice grew quieter. “Beth and I even have the same personality,” she said. “I’m the quiet one, the homebody.”